Gallipoli

The Gallipoli Educational Activities booklet features a brief introductory activity called 'Getting Started', followed by seven separate activities designed to encourage student interaction with the rich range of historical sources in the Australians in World War I: Gallipoli commemorative publication.

Some activities utilise the videos and interviews on the Gallipoli iBook, which you can download for free to your iPad.

Chapter 5: The difficult business

The Battle of the Landing, 25 April–3 May 1915

As dawn approached on 25 April the Ribble, along with other British destroyers and battleships, eased its way towards the Gallipoli peninsula. The first wave of men, whose task it was to storm the beach and then push inland as fast as possible, was composed of the units of the 3rd Australian Brigade: three infantry battalions of men from Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. They made the last part of their night journey in thirty-six rowing boats, towed inshore from battleships by small Royal Navy steam boats. Even before they reached the beach in the half light, the small Turkish garrison had spotted them and bullets began hitting the boats, killing some, wounding others. As the boats grounded around the tip of the Ari Burnu promontory men launched themselves out, some into deep water where they drowned. Most struggled ashore, soaking wet and weighed down by their rifles and sodden packs. There was initial confusion about where exactly they had landed, for above them towered a steep cliff-like landscape. Australia's official historian, Charles Bean, later described this critical moment:

Lieutenant Talbot Smith with the scouts of the 10th Battalion [from South Australia], thirty-two in number, had struck the shore just after the first shot was fired. 'Come on, boys', he cried, 'they can't hit you' ... '10th Battalion scouts,' he shouted, 'are you ready?' He then led them straight up the height, while the Turks were firing over their heads. From the left hand edge of the plateau could be seen the flash of a machine-gun. They made towards it.

Soon hundreds of Australians were hard on the ascent of what was later known as Plugge's Plateau, their first major obstacle on the peninsula. It was no easy climb: the wounded or killed slid back down the slope until stopped by a bush; bayonets were dug into the earth to help them climb; and from the top of the plateau the Turkish defenders kept up a steady fire. Soon, the Australians reached the top and quickly overcame a trench full of Turkish soldiers, while the remainder of the garrison made off into the country beyond.

From the top of Plugge's it would have been possible in the increasing light to see just what the landing force had taken on. Stretching away into the distance were the ridges and deep valleys of a wild, rugged, scrub-covered land-scape. The ridges stretched southwards from the main Sari Bair chain, which lead up to the highest points on this part of the peninsula: Chunuk Bair, Hill Q and Hill 971, Koja Temen Tepe. For the Anzacs, the day's fighting, as it developed, never brought them near the objectives called for in the original plan. Small, isolated groups did manage to make their way up landward slopes towards Chunuk Bair and on to Third or Gun Ridge, from which positions the strait of the Dardanelles was visible, but they were beaten back by ever strengthening Turkish counter-attacks. Indeed, one historian of Gallipoli is convinced that it was this swift and decisive Turkish response that defeated the Anzacs:

... it was the celerity with which the Turkish command propelled reserves towards the battlefield and the tenacity with which those who met the landing continued to fight that turned the tables.

So the Anzacs were discovering not, as they had envisaged, an enemy that would soon run from determined attack, but soldiers who would stand and fight. Leading the Turkish counter-attack down from Chunuk Bair was the commander of the 19th Turkish Division, Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal, who famously told his men:

I don't order you to attack, I order you to die. In the time it takes us to die, other troops and commanders can come and take our places.

On 25 April, despite their efforts to get inland, and the landing of the bulk of their infantry, the Anzacs were held by the Turks to an area of the peninsula (soon also called 'Anzac') about one kilometre deep and two kilometres long. The front line eventually stretched from the south at Brighton Beach, northwards along Bolton's Ridge, through Lone Pine and along Second Ridge to Quinn's Post. There was then a gap in the line across a valley to a small ridge known as Pope's Hill. A further valley separated Pope's from the left wing of the Anzac position at Walker's Ridge and Russell's Top. To the north along Ocean Beach were the Outposts, No. 1 and No. 2, positioned to give warning of any Turkish attack from that area.

By the evening of 25 April, the little cove to the south of Ari Burnu, soon named Anzac Cove, was crammed with the wounded who had made their way down or been carried down from the front line. Turkish shelling, which had begun within an hour of the initial landing, also took an increasing toll. So pessimistic were some Australian commanders on the spot that they recommended to General Birdwood, when he came ashore, that the whole force be withdrawn, as it had failed to meet its objectives. Although horrified, Birdwood relayed this opinion to Sir Ian Hamilton, then asleep on the battleship Queen Elizabeth. After hearing from naval commanders that instant evacuation was virtually impossible, Hamilton replied:

You have got through the difficult business, now you have only to dig, dig, dig until you are safe.

Hamilton also sent the reassuring news that the Royal Australian Navy's submarine AE2 had successfully made its way through the Turkish defences of the Narrows and was on its way up to the Sea of Marmara. At the Anzac firing line, developing along the seaward side of Second Ridge, ordinary soldiers might have been a bit surprised to hear thoughts of retreat. Private Roy Denning of the First Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers, wrote:

In spite of the dirty and in some cases ragged uniform covering tired bodies the men were cheerful and laughed at their plight, some jokingly saying, 'Oh, if only my girl could see me now' ... In the early hours of the morning I heard the Officers going along amongst the men, saying 'Stick to it lads, don't go to sleep', and the cheerful reply would come, 'No, Sir, we won't go to sleep' ... and my heart swelled with admiration ... I thought I was justified in being an Australian ... Give me Australians as comrades and I will go anywhere duty calls.

The struggle to hold, even enlarge, the Anzac position, called by Bean 'The Battle of the Landing', went on for nearly ten days. During that time the Turks made a number of fierce attacks aimed at driving their enemies back into the sea, and only equally determined Anzac defence prevented disaster. In this they were assisted by the guns of the British warships, whose shell bursts were capable of breaking up bunched groups of Turkish soldiers making a mass attack. Private Archibald Barwick fought through those days in one of the hottest parts of the line — the Chessboard area near Quinn's Post:

I had two rifles smashed in my hands during the fighting on the 27th ... the piece of ground opposite us was literally covered with dead bodies, our own boys and Turks. God knows what our losses were must have run into a few thousands.

During the night of 2–3 May 1915 a final attempt was made to push the Anzac line forward, up towards a hill called Baby 700, on the way to Chunuk Bair. Four Anzac battalions, among them the 16th Battalion from Western Australia, were to take the action up steep slopes to Turkish trenches at the top. Private Les Wallis of the 16th Battalion was one of the few to reach the crest of the hill known as the Bloody Angle. He wrote to his brother:

At 12 o'clock ... we were entrenched where the enemy had been. I can't speak of our Dead and wounded — too sad Jimmie ... bullets were again flying around like flies ... I'm scratches all over ... It's a sad, sad day when we land in Fremantle, if we ever do, what's left of our old 16th West Aust Batt.

Shortly after dawn, the 16th were beaten off their newly won trenches. Landing on 25 April with more than 1000 men, the battalion had been reduced in nine days of continuous fighting to only 309 men. Bean eventually estimated the loss to the Anzac Corps during this period as 8364 killed, wounded and missing. Signaller Ellis Silas, 16th Battalion, wrote that there were few left at battalion roll call on 11 May: 'just a thin line of weary, ashen-faced men, behind us a mass of silent forms, once our comrades'.